BEHAVIOUR
POLICY ON DETENTIONS TO CLOSE OR NOT TO CLOSE?
I am sure most of you are aware that the Department for Education has removed the need for schools
to give parents 24-hours notice of after-school detentions. The weather on the evening of Thursday 1st March had taken a significant turn for the worse. It
appeared that Leicestershire had remained largely unscathed from the ‘Beast from the East’, judging by
regional and national news, but that evening brought prolonged snow showers. That evening, I was in
keeping up-to-date with weather and traffic news, and alerts issued by Leicestershire police. I was also
in touch with Headteachers of other schools locally; we all recognise that having a common approach
suits parents best.
As has always been the case, we reserve the right to keep pupils for up to 10 minutes at the end of
school to discuss minor breaches of the school behaviour policy. Please rest assured that, where a
longer detention of up to one hour may be appropriate, we would always contact you first to let you
know.
Mr J Mellor
Headteacher
PUNCTUALITY
Parents are reminded that students will be kept for fifteen minutes at the end of the day if they
arrive at school after 8.45am. If this happens twice in a week, the student will be kept for an hour
after school on Friday with a member of SLT. Repeated lateness to school will result in more severe
sanctions being applied.
BEHAVIOUR TO/FROM SCHOOL
Behaviour in school has been judged as Outstanding by OFSTED in their last two visits, and visitors to
the school routinely comment on the calm, learning atmosphere.
We are very proud of this, and also of our community relations, so I am disappointed to have to
report that we still – very occasionally - receive some complaints of anti-social behaviour by our
pupils on the way to and from school. So far, in each case, I have been able to identify those
responsible and they have been made to apologise to those reporting the incidents.
Please remind your child of their responsibilities while travelling to and from school, particularly if they
are using public transport.
Mr J Mellor
Headteacher
BE SAFE ONLINE
We have become aware of several young girls receiving inappropriate messages, including explicit
images over social media. We understand that other similar aged pupils in other local schools/
colleges have received the same or similar contact. The matters have been reported to the police
and they have begun an investigation into the matters reported. In the meantime, we would like to
remind parents to highlight the dangers of social media to their children and, wherever possible, be
aware of what your children are doing online.
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SCHOOL INFORMATION
Achievement in a Caring Environment
My first consideration is: is it safe for staff and students to get to school? I left home at 5.45am on that
Friday morning, so I could make an early decision. (The last thing parents need is to find out that their
child’s school is closed as they are just leaving for work at 8.00am). My journey in to Loughborough
was trouble-free, the roads had been well-treated. An earlier accident at J23 of the M1 had been
cleared, so my thoughts were that the majority of staff would be able to get in to work safely, which did
indeed prove to be the case. I must, by the way, commend those staff who took to public transport to
get to school because their cars were snowed in on driveways and side streets – real commitment to
the cause! Virtually all of our students walk to school, and live less than a mile away, so by leaving a
little earlier and exercising caution, I was also expecting the majority of students to be able to make it
in.
The second consideration is: is the site safe? Students at Limehurst regularly have to leave one building
to get to another as part of their daily timetable, so there need to be safe pathways connecting all of
our entrances and exits. Our premises team had done a marvellous job of creating safe routes around
the site, so this wasn’t a problem. Unlike another local school whose water pipes had frozen, we had
no such problems. Therefore, there would be no disruption to sanitation, catering, etc. The site was
safe.
The third consideration was: is the working environment going to be comfortable for staff and
students? Again, no problem with this; the heating systems were working perfectly.
The final consideration was: does the weather forecast indicate a deterioration during the day? This
was not the case, so at just after 6.30am, I was able to post on our school website and on our Twitter
account that we would be open.
By 10.00am, I was convinced that we had made the right decision. It’s amazing how much better things
look when the sun has risen! Closing the school is always a last resort. In my nine years as Headteacher
at Limehurst, I have only reached that decision twice. I hope that sharing my thought process with you
has given you, whether you agree with the decision or not, an insight into how the decision on that
particular day was reached.
Achievement in a Caring Environment
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